


Haven - 1

by Tinferbrains



Category: Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Post-Apocalyptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 00:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinferbrains/pseuds/Tinferbrains
Summary: Jack, thrown elsewhere on earth, begins to seek assistance to defeat Aku.





	Haven - 1

Jack was frustrated. He'd lost again. Aku was on the brink of losing but ripped open another portal. This time, rather than throwing Jack through time, he sent Jack to another place entirely on the earth.

The state of the world was the same here. Robots were the primary lifeform, if they can really be called that, but there was the occasional alien.  
There was no - or close to no - trees, or greenery of any sort.

_I need assistance if I'm to defeat Aku_, Jack thought to himself. Not an army, just someone to watch his back.  
As he looked around that thought seemed to grow more and more impossible. There was nobody in sight, only the beetle-shaped robots .

Jack grabbed his sword tightly and started to walk, with the mindset "There must be people somewhere. If I walk one way far enough I'll find them."

  
Every now and then a beetle bot would stray from their path towards Jack but determined either he wasn't a threat or he is a threat they'd rather not deal with, and reentered the original path. Jack didn't mind; it gave him a bit of a rush not knowing whether he'd need to defend himself or just keep walking.

  
The roads were weathered, and where there was once grass it was now patches of sun-dried, cracked mud.

  
After a few hours' walking, a weathered old city skyline came into view. A grin crept across Jack's face as he picked up his pace. As he grew closer the grin faded. The buildings were mostly intact - windows had broken at some point but the structures were standing - but there were no signs of life in the entire city. There were what looked like metal shells on wheels stopped in the street.

  
"This is... different... than the other cities I've seen." muttered Jack to himself, recalling the alien-filled, glowing cities he saw before his last encounter with Aku.

  
"This was a human city" responded a voice out of nowhere.  
Jack looked around quickly, trying to find the source of the voice. The source laughed.  
"Don't worry, I'm not about to hurt you. I see that big ol' sword you got there" the voice said, as if to try and calm Jack.

  
"Who are you? Show yourself." Jack said, calmly but sternly.  
A little girl walked out from behind a half-crumbled wall and waved.

  
"I'm Belle", she said, "What's your name?"

  
"They call me Jack." replied the samurai.

  
"You're not from around here, are you Jack?" Belle asked, opening her arms in a gesture of "here".

  
Jack replied "No, I am from long ago, in a different time; a different location. I failed to destroy the demon Aku and he brought years of evil and death to the world. Now I seek warriors to fight alongside me."

  
Belle bounced up and down a little before saying "You should go to the Haven!"  
Jack raised an eyebrow.

  
Belle explained, "long ago, most likely after taking over this world, Aku opened up spaceports to allow more beings, aliens, to reside here, and to spread the word of him across the galaxy. Lots of the bigger cities, like this one, were evacuated before they became targets. The first influx of aliens targeted bigger, more populated, cities, to loot and take over. The evacuation is probably the only reason this city isn't crawling with aliens."

  
Jack asked "And what is the Haven you spoke of?"

  
Belle continued, "Oh yeah. Well, some of the humans who evacuated organized and built a city somehow protected from most outside threats. I call it the Haven. I'm sure there's a real name for it, though."

  
"Why are you here and not in the Haven?" questioned Jack.

  
"Dunno. I guess I thought it'd be more fun to have the whole city to myself. Nobody's bothered to even come in til you showed up."

  
Jack's face grew serious. "Which way is Haven?"

  
Belle pointed off to the east. "That way. I can't see it from here but if anybody can make it there alone it's you."

  
"Are you sure you don't wish to come along?" asked the samurai.

  
"No, like I said, I have the whooooole city to myself. I can sleep in whatever house I want, eat whatever food I like..."

  
Jack started walking, and as he turned back to wave goodbye he saw Belle still listing off all the things she planned to do in "her" city. She caught his eye and they exchanged a wave of good-bye.

  
"I'll still be here if you want to visit!" she shouted to him, and he gave a nod of acknowledgement.

  
Turning back, he took in what he would have to cross to get to Haven. The ground was scorched, no life was seen beyond insects - biological and mechanical, and as Belle had said, Haven was nowhere to be seen yet. He had to have faith that the girl knew what she was talking about.

  
Jack left the abandoned city at a jog, trying to make up as much time as he could before nightfall.

  
Soon enough he was met by a wall of 4 beetlebots, and these ones didn't back down.  
Jack drew his sword.

  
Two bots came at him, one from his left, the other his right.  
Jack jumped and kicked the head off of the beetlebot on his left, then sliced the bot on his right down the middle as he flew over it, propelled by momentum from his kick.  
Another rushed him from behind - Jack heard the crack of a twig it stepped on and whipped his sword around, plunging it deep into the belly of the attacker.  
The last of the remaining bots tried to scuttle behind a large rock, likely to try and catch Jack off-guard later.  
Thinking quickly, Jack cut the jaw off of one of the dead beetlebots and threw it like a shuriken, which found its place in the last beetlebot's metal skull.

  
Shaking the black "blood" of the bots off his hands, Jack continued on eastward. He sheathed his sword, as there were no threats in view.  
In a couple hours Jack felt his stomach rumble. He looked around for anything edible.

  
A small creature hopped by him. Jack froze. The animal resembled a mixture of squirrel and rabbit - long ears and feet, slender body, and a long fluffy tail, but with only three legs. It slowly approached a small black pool of what Jack assumed was a beetlebot's blood. Jack watched in awe as the strange creature lapped up some of the foul-smelling liquid and ran off.  
_So... there is life, and it seems to have adapted to this world_, Jack thought.

  
With that in mind, he set a snare with some wire and hid near the small pool to wait for a chance at catching some food. After an hour or so passed he hit the jackpot. Three of the rabbit/squirrel hybrids came to drink, and Jack yanked on his end of the snare. It tightened around the creature's foot but its struggling scared the other two away.

  
One is all Jack needed, anyway. He snapped the small animal's neck and proceeded to skin it with his sword, noting that the creature, unlike most things he'd seen here, still had red blood.  
Jack arranged some small twigs into a pile and set a large rock next to it. He then swung his sword at the rock. He got the result he was hoping for - sparks.

After a few attempts, some of the twigs caught, and he worked with it, throwing anything he saw that might burn in. He stabbed his sword through the middle of the rodentlike creature he'd killed like a kebab and cooked it over the fire as he relaxed after a long day's travel.

  
After the meat was fully cooked through, Jack peeled bits of it off the bones and enjoyed the succulent taste like nothing he'd experienced since coming to this time.  
Just then a sound reached Jack’s ears - he stayed still and focused. He heard… the bubbling of water!  
Realizing how parched he was, Jack searched for the source of the sound. Over a small hill he found it. A small spring bubbled up from the ground, only to disappear into a hole a few feet later.  
The samurai dropped to his knees by the spring and scooped handfuls of the water into his mouth, quenching the thirst that had been building since his arrival in this place.

  
Lacking any container to collect water for the walk, Jack made a mental note of his surroundings, to easily find the spring again. Glancing up at the sun’s location to reorient himself, he got back on his eastward path to the haven.

Jack trekked across dry land for hours before settling down in a small cavern in a hillside at nightfall. He hadn’t been outside after daylight but could only assume if beetle bots were out during the day, much worse could come out at night.  
As he tried to get in a comfortable position to get some rest, he bumped something cold and hard; upon feeling around some more he determined it was a human skeleton. Nearby he found what he thought to be the unlucky traveler’s pack - hopefully there was some food, maybe water.

  
The following morning, light fell on the pack and Jack searched its contents. It seemed that he wasn't the first to find it - there were small bits of food but most had been eaten. He did, however, find a canteen that was half full and an empty glass bottle.

Hoisting the pack over his shoulder, he left out of the cave to find the haven.  
A lone beetle bot attempted to catch him by surprise while he was taking a breather - a quick slash of his sword took care of the robotic monstrosity.

  
Jack remembered the small creatures that drank the “blood” of the robots, and thought - just in case he needed to lure some - to gather some of the liquid in the glass bottle in the pack he'd found. He set down the open bottle, picked up the detached head of the beetle bot, and carefully poured as much as possible in for later.

Jack screwed the lid back on the bottle and placed it in the pack before continuing toward Haven.

Days passed. Beetle bots seemed to avoid Jack since he'd bottled the “blood”. He was grateful he'd found a canteen, because no more streams - no more water at all, actually - were found on the walk. Jack passed another abandoned human city; initially he thought he'd found Haven until he saw the poor, dilapidated shape of all the structures.

  
Then he finally found it.  
The buildings were intact. There were other people walking around. A resident saw him, the way he was dressed, and looked suspiciously at him.  
_I must find a place to stay, and a way to blend in_, he realized.  
Quickly, he darted into a bush and kept an eye on a small red-doored house.  
Hours passed and though people walked by, nobody noticed him or approached the house.  
He dashed to the back of the house and climbed in an open window. The bedroom he was in had a closet of clothes that seemed about the right size for Jack.  
Once he was changed into less noticeable attire, he hung his previous outfit in the back of the closet.  
Jack thought to himself that he should search the house; just to get familiarized, if nothing else.  
During the search he found another large bedroom, a kitchen and living room, and a room full of various glass tubes and bottles. He found this room the best place to leave the beetle bot blood - marked with a large “X”.  
**Knock knock knock**  
Jack heard pounding on the front door; he approached and opened it to see a very short man standing there.  
“You must be a new professor!” said the little man excitedly.  
“Yes, I am new,” Jack replied.  
“What's your name, stranger?” Asked the man.  
“Jack,” the disguised samurai responded, “but you can call me professor…” - he looked around and saw the brand name ‘UTONIUM’ on the front of the fridge - “... Utonium.”  
“Glad to meet you, Professor Utonium. I'm the mayor here in Townsville,” welcomed the small man.  
Jack accepted his outstretched hand in a handshake.  
The mayor walked off and Jack closed the door before thinking to himself, _Professor Utonium_.

**Author's Note:**

> This work focuses on Samurai Jack; There will be more, not more chapters but more stories - focusing more on other characters. There is a "grand plan" that will come together after these shorter stories are all written.


End file.
